linate

or another example. you buy name brand stuff. does the manufacturing justify the cost? not always, probably not usually i'd guess. there might be some incremental cost factors making it more expensive, but everyone knows a lot of times you are just paying for the brand. they charge more because they can. 

also, would you get rid of the price controls we currently have on medicaid and medicare?

if we didn't have those controls, couldn't someone use all the arguments you are using to say why we shouldn't get to the point we currently are? we'd end up paying a bunch of money we don't need to, just because you guys have some cockamamie ideas about why healthcare is justifed in costing so much. if we can cost control what we do on those programs, there's no reason we can't go a little further too. 

if a hospital uses the mri machien twice a day, in a year they have seven hundred thousand dollars. that pays for the machine and costs, with plenty of profit as the years roll by. how does that help the mri machine people innovate? yes, if we give the manufacturer the profit they need, that helps innovation, but anything beyond that is just the hospital taking everything for all it's worth. you guys act like there must be some complex cost factors causing us to cost so much in the usa, but i'd liken it to luxory cars. it doesn't cost a lot to make these cars relative to other cars.... it's just that there's a big demand. basic supply and demand. 

you asked for numbers. i'd say my above hypothetical is sufficient to show there's plenty going on that wouldn't justify what they charge. i'd also point out that we can look at this from the process of elimination. you guys keep saying things are adding to the cost to justify the price, but everytime you contend something, i show it to be small fries. as i said in the last post, a doctor shortage doesn't explain why we cost twice as much, nor does research and development, nor does malpractice law suits. 

so where are your numbers? i see you guys throwing around a lot of theories but not using much in way of numbers. if you have another theory for why it costs so much i'm sure i can show those to not stick too as to why we cost twice as much as everyone else. 

how is it justified for one hostpital to charge twice as much as another hospital on hte other side of town, for the same procedure? 

i'm not proposing opening up the checkbook for more unchecked spending. i'm proposing putting some checks in place to keep spending down. 

do you propose getting rid of medicaid and medicare cost controls that we currently have? 

i dont see a lot of hard numbers from you. just a lot of theorizing.

concrete example. how does an MRI in the usa costing a thousand dollars but in other countries only two hundred, help innovation? sure they have the cost of the MRI machine, but after that, it's just the hospital milking the situation for all they can. 

how is it justifiable for a doctor to make twice as much as other countries? just because he spends more in medical school doesn't justify that much of a difference. and, if you agree we needs more doctors, you're basically agreeing they make too much, anyway. you just limit the solutions more than i do.

you keep saying there would be deficits but dont say how? our spending of government revenue stays pretty much the same, but if we increased taxes we'd be swapping out premiums for taxes. i dont know how this is so hard to understand. if we spend nineteen percent now in general spending and got the rest of that healthcare revenue we currently spend at 18 percent, we'd be spending thirty seven percent in total. no one is proposing deficit spending to pay for healthcare... they all propose tax increases. 

i showed you that R and D accounts for a hundred billion a year. even if we assume they are trying to make a profit, can't we also assume the profit is within a certain range of the investments? maybe they need three times as much profit on that investment, i dont know. but it is still a small portion of our healthcare costs. in your example, companies are accepting less from other countries, only because they make profit from them too, and can charge us exorbitant amounts simply because they can. 

you act like the supply and demand for healthcare acts the way it's suppose to based on some complex factors. healthcare providers charge a lot simply because they can. not because there's some complex cost factor that they need to cover. people don't shop for healthcare, they just go. it's called 'inelastic demand'. innovation is a small amount of costs. 

https://www.healthcare-economist.com/2009/07/22/is-health-care-demand-elastic/

the only way you could think i ignored it, is if you ignored what i replied with. i replied with how his idea of runaway deficits was illogical, and his idea of crushing innovation was misinformed and gave him some numbers for perspective. 

this article talks about how research and innovation wouldn't necessarily die becaue of universal care.

it says that we spend around a hundred bilion per year on reseach and development. you can see it's just a fraction of what we spend on our trillions in healhcare. we could double our R and D spending and still cover everyone. 

if a doctor makes twice as much as doctors in other countries, that doesn't have anything to do with research or anything. most procedures don't have anything to do with research in why they cost so much.... they charge more simply because they can, compared to other countries. it's a bloated system where the open checkbooks of insurance competes with the open checkbook of government spending, to cause inflated costs. i dont know if you ever looked into what percent of our helathcare is actually spent on research but it's just  small fraction. 

i think your biggest problem isn't so much that you lack the ability to engage in big picture thinking.... it's just that you don't know enough factual information to base educated decisions on. 

also you may have been missing the basic point that if we have medicare for all or something, we would obviously increase taxes to pay for it. the main point being, it will still cost if not the same than less than we pay now, overall. spending ten grand in premiums isn't magically better just because it's a premium and not a tax, than spending eight grand in taxes. 

if we keep our spending at 18 percent of GDP, however you want to view that number it's still a lot of money that can cover everyone. even if all the expenses don't go away, it's still a simple accounting issue where we lower the price on costs to get everyone covered for the same price. or, do you propose getting rid of the cost regulations on medicaid and meeicare? medicare spends a fifth what insurance does, and medicaid spends a third what imedicare does. to get into the actual numbers, obamacare's medicaid expansion costs five grand per person, whereas spending in general costs closer to eight nine or ten thousand dollars. in other words, we cover more people at a fraction of the going rate. 

you harp on us being the big innovators but i'm not sayin we necessarily spend like the rest of the world.... we spend ten grand per person, they spend five grand.... or you can break it down with GDP numbers. 

you wrote a big wave of text but didn't really say anything- the biggest impediment to progress isn't ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge. 

every other country keeps costs under control so why wouldn't we? they all spend not much more than ten percent GDP on healthcare, whereas we spend 18 percent. the difference amounts to over a trillion dollars a year, enough savings to balance our budget too, if we wanted, if we taxed the potential revenue. but that's not the main point i'm trying to make right now. i'm trying to say we can marginally add ten percent more people for the costs we currently have, and prevent people from going bankrupt and ruining their lives too. personally id think we should be more like every other country in what we spend, but a lot of people think innovation will suffer. if we keep spending eighteen percent GDP there's no way innovation will suffer. and my bottom line point is true.... covering everyone and stopping medical bankruptcies is all a matter of an accounting issue

whatever your points might be can be remedied by us having more doctors, simple as that. we need to stop limiting the supply. 

but as to your numbers. 

only ten percent of people are uninsured. most states have less than that uninsured. that means the actual number is around ten percent more patients who will need to be seen. that means to use your numbers two hundred more patients per doctor per year would need seen. if you do the math, that's less than one more patient per day to be looked at. so yes it's completely doable. i'm not one to tell them if they have to see more patients, but i would decrease what is paid for the existing patient set, and use the money to cover the rest. such that, they can just see some more patients to get the same amount of money. 

as far as the special v generalist point you made, i think you are making that too complicated. everyone who is a medial person we would assume will get ten percent more people if they are willing to take the increased numbers. i dont think it will be a problem, as when obamacare was passed the increased numbers just got absorbed into the system, so i dont know why five percent more in most states would break the bank. 

giving people healthcare similar to food stamps? or, in other words give them subsidies but keep our current structure? or in other words, obamacare minus the mandate and regulations?  i never took you for an obamacare type of person. 

if a doctor sees two hundred patients a year and makes two hundred thousand a year doing it, i dont think anything monumentally different is going to occur if he sees two hundred and twenty patients and makes the same amount of money. if we continue spending 18 percent of our GDP on healthcare, while ensuring everyone is covered... when other countries dont spend much more than ten percent.... i dont think innovation will suffer. personally, id get our number down closer to other countries, but the point is we spend so much that it's all an accounting issue that we cover everyone, which is the main thing we have to focus on

that 1 in 900 stat is for canada. most other countries have even fewer people coming over for healthcare. 

that weebly link in the OP says that only 1 out of nine hundred come here for the healthcare per year. that's not exactly people flooding to get here. people do go other places from here because of our wait time problem, and the cost problem. 

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-03-2012/myths-canada-health-care.html

even my link states that canada is worse when it comes to wait times. that is not new information and doesn't establish anything. every other country worth comparing to has better wait times than we do, and covers everyone. if your concern is wait times, you should say "yes i will support medicare for all, or something to cover everyone, as long as it's contingent on getting more doctors". 

the usa is one of the worst countries when it comes to wait times, when all other developed countries has some sort of universal care.

yes we should get more doctors. that's not the main reason it's so expesensive here, as we can tell that increasing doctors by a third isn't going to cut costs by a half, which is where we need to be to be like other countries. 

we don't have to have medicare for all to save money by regulating costs. switzerland uses an obamacare like system that is affordable. again, the main reason they are affordable is because they regulate costs. 

i dont know if people are so underinsured that it significantly affects them. so i dont think getting medciare for all would instantly make them cause too much more demand. obamacare requires minimum coverage so i'd think everyone gets what they need. granted, if we just let people go where they want whenever they want with no copays or deductibles or anything, it could be pretty bad. but that's not the way medicare is set up now, and it's not a reason to be against universal care. it's just a reason not to support that sort of system. 

if we increase insurance to the remaining ten percent, it won't drastically cause demand to increase that much, and if we increase the number of doctors, that would very much offset increased demand anyway. 

given all the information in the OP link, why would anyone b e against getting everyone healthcare and making it affordable with better quality?

on average most other countries have thirty three percent more doctors than we do. on average, we spend twice as much as they do too. it's not all because of the limited supply of doctors that is why we are so expensive. as the link says, we use the bargaining power that comes along with the government healhcare to lower costs, and get rid of administrative cost from the insurance middle man. you can see this is where to save all that money: medicare spends a fifth less than insurance due to regulating costs, and medciaid spends a third less. insurance spends thirty cents on the dollar on profit and aministration (many hopsitals have as many billing experts as they do hospital beds) 

we also know that most states have less than ten percent of people uninsured.... if you have five percent uninsured, giving them healthcare isn't going to drastically change the demand for doctors. this is both why the wait lines wouldn't be an issue, and why increased demand for doctors wouldn't be such an issue either. 

here is a bunch of information on how medicare for all would probably be cheaper with better quality and shorter wait times, than our current system

here is a bunch of information on how medicare for all would probably be cheaper with better quality and shorter wait times, than our current system